Join our Movement

Detention Bulletin - Issue 53 - May/June 2014

At the end of June, a total of 202 Palestinian children were imprisoned and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system, a decrease of 5.6 percent from May.

The number of young children detained between the ages of 14 and 15 was 32, the same as the previous month. There were no children detained in the Israeli military court system under 14 years old.

In June, over 700 Palestinians were detained as part of an arrest campaign carried out by Israeli forces following the disappearance of three Israeli settler teens on June 12. During the 18-day operation in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians, including one child, Mohammad Dudeen, 15, from Dura, Hebron.

Mid-year update

In the first six months of 2014, Palestinian children continued to be subject to widespread and systematic ill-treatment and torture in the Israeli military detention system. Below are selected statistics compiled from 59 affidavits from children arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank between January and June.

Type of ill-treatment

# of cases

Percentage

Hand ties

56

95.9%

Blindfolds

47

79.7%

Physical violence

45

76.3%

Signed papers in Hebrew

14

23.7%

No lawyer prior/during interrogation

57

96.6%

A new DCI-Palestine report highlighted the rising numbers of Palestinian children subjected to solitary confinement for interrogation purposes in Israeli detention.

DCI-Palestine called on Israeli military court judges to exclude all evidence obtained by force or coercion, and demanded that the practice of using solitary confinement on children in Israeli detention facilities be recognized as a form of torture and stopped immediately.

Failed "summons" pilot program

Israel's chief military prosecutor for the West Bank, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Hirsch, declared in February that a new pilot program would soon be implemented to provide an alternative to arresting Palestinian children from their homes at night.

Recent attempts by Israeli military and intelligence officers to “summon” Palestinian children for questioning, however, fail to address ill-treatment once they are in Israeli military custody. For more analysis, read Israeli military courts: Masquerading as justice?.